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SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon Studios today announced it has acquired the global
television rights to the Culture’s first novel Consider Phlebas. The
famed space opera by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks features Banks’
fictional interstellar utopian society, the Culture. The series will be
adapted by Dennis
Kelly (Utopia, Matilda) with Plan B Entertainment (World
War Z, 12 Years a Slave, The Big Short, Moonlight,
Feud) slated to produce and the Estate of Iain Banks attached as
Executive Producer.

A kinetic, action-packed adventure on a huge canvas, Consider Phlebas
draws upon the extraordinary world and mythology Banks created in the
Culture, in which a highly advanced and progressive society ends up at
war with the Idirans, a deeply religious, warlike race intent on
dominating the entire galaxy.

The story centers on Horza, a rogue agent tasked by the Idirans with the
impossible mission of recovering a missing Culture ‘Mind,’ an artificial
intelligence many thousands of times smarter than any human—something
that could hold the key to wiping out the Culture altogether. What
unfolds, with Banks’ trademark irreverent humor, ultimately asks the
poignant question of how we can use technology to preserve our humanity,
not surrender it.

“The story of the Culture is so rich and captivating that for years
Hollywood has been trying to bring this utopian society to life on the
screen,” said Sharon Tal Yguado, Head of Scripted Series at Amazon
Studios. “We are honored that we have been chosen, along with Dennis
Kelly and Plan B Entertainment, to make Consider Phlebas into a
television series we think will be loved by fans for years to come.”

“Iain Banks has long been a hero of mine, and his innate warmth, humor
and humanism shines through these novels,” said Dennis Kelly. “Far from
being the dystopian nightmares that we are used to, Banks creates a kind
of flawed paradise, a society truly worth fighting for—rather than a
warning from the future, his books are a beckoning.”

“We revere the work of Iain Banks and continue to be moved by his
inimitable spirit and his commitment to imagining a better future even
in the darkest of times,” said Plan B. “Consider Phlebas,
simultaneously explores the deepest questions concerning humanity and
our future. We are so grateful to the Estate of Iain Banks for the
opportunity to bring his work to life, and to Amazon for the scope of
their ambition to building Iain’s prescient world.”

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